On Tue, Jun 2, 2015 at 8:05 PM, Matthew Jordan <mjor...@digium.com> wrote:
> Suggestion 1: Make the module opt in instead of opt out. > > In most cases, I would normally agree with this proposal, as I > personally prefer an opt in model instead of an opt out model. > Unfortunately, I'm not sure I can think of a way where this suggestion > would work with Asterisk - where work implies that a meaningful number > of people are presented with the option to opt in in a consistent > fashion. Unlike a number of other projects, Asterisk does not have: > * A consistent way in which it is downloaded or deployed. Asterisk is > built from source; obtained from upstream distro packages; from the > project packages; from ISO distributions; and more. All of these can > determine what is presented during the process, and the Asterisk > project itself has little control over those mechanisms. > I think this is generally true for virtually every open source project. > * A UI that can present a user with a single, one-time only option to > 'opt in'. This is in contrast to say Operating Systems or anything > running with any kind of installation UI. > Even operating systems don't have a consistent deployment method. There's lots of ways to do it and the installation UI isn't used for much beyond laptops and one-off test systems. Production systems are generally some sort of automated install or done with pre-built images. Anyway, my point is that I don't think Asterisk is terribly unique here, either. > Personally, I'd like some way to present any user of Asterisk with a > one-time only, non-annoying "please help the project and opt in" > question, and then move on forever. Unfortunately, I don't have a good > idea on making this suggestion work. If the only way to opt in is to > provide a .conf file and set "enable = true", then I can't see > anywhere near sufficient numbers of people being aware of the > configuration choice, much less making the choice to enable it, to > justify the creation of the module itself. > > If someone has a good proposal on making the suggestion work, then I'd > love to entertain it further. > I feel that "opt-out" is fundamentally wrong from a privacy perspective. Further, I think the potential backlash and resulting damage to the project is pretty severe. I also don't think "opt-in is hard" is an acceptable reason not to do it. If it's too hard to make an opt-in solution useful, then maybe it shouldn't be done at all. This sort of thing really doesn't seem very common, and this is probably a big reason why. One alternative would be to issue periodic user surveys that are promoted on the mailing lists, twitter, etc. I don't think you'll ever get a reliable "absolute numbers" measure. A survey could still produce useful relative numbers and help identify some trends over time. -- Russell Bryant
-- _____________________________________________________________________ -- Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com -- asterisk-dev mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-dev
